Reasons why GPU overclocking is done

We have heard the term “Overclocking” more so about CPUs than GPUs, but lately, the GPU overclocking is the goal of every gamer who wants to quench even the last bit of performance out of their graphics card, just to hit that 30 or 60 FPS mark. If you are not familiar with GPU overclocking we have got you covered just follow this guide. [How to overclock Graphics Card]

however, if you already are familiar with the beginner’s guide and want to push your hardware even further, you just need to follow this guide [How to overclock your CPU]but beware what you are doing might affect your hardware; even rendering it unusable. So, be very cautioned before following any of the above-linked guides.

That’s it for the technicality part, what this article is going to present is, far from the technicalities, it will explore the driving force that pushes you to overclock your GPU, by describing the main reasons why GPU overclocking is mainstream nowadays and more importantly. is it worth the effort?

Enhanced Visuals

Nowadays games are built on a high definition artwork (6k, 8k) program that provides stunning visuals even if you are not playing the game in the highest possible resolution, or the best graphics that game has to offer. Nevertheless, overclocking your GPU might make the difference that could change your experience altogether, it might even flip it, as the overclocking is as mysterious as it gets.

You might get that 4k resolution keeping the frame rate intact, or it might as well make your experience worse-off with the same settings that you had before overclocking, the reason is that the overclocking as the name suggests increases the clock speed of the GPU, but the texture rendering units and the CUDA cores or stream processors in case of Nvidia and AMD respectively, are physically the same.

So, performance is a given,but enhancing visual quality that might be your reason to overclock could potentially ruin your effort. We tested the Ashes of Singularity against different clock speeds of different cards at Dx12 and at Dx11 configuration and got the results as expected.

Performance

For a gamer, the GPU is the most important part of the computer apart from CPU and RAM of course. You want to play the new Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry game, but your current GPU only meets the minimum requirements, and you can barely hit the 30 FPS mark, all in all, not a good experience what you would do bearing in mind that you can’t just go outside and bring the likes of GTX 1080, first thing that you would try to do will be overclocking your GPU (again with caution).

The extra clockspeed can boost your GPU’s performance by only a margin, but this marginal boost Is what saving you from buying the overpriced graphics cards that are usually not available.

For this test, a slightly older card the Nvidia GTX 770 OC edition was used running games in stock speed and then overclocked speeds and we used slightly older titles so that the reader can better quantify the gains of overclocking from the graphics card. EA Sims 3 a very gentle game that is not so harsh on the GPU, it got around 160 fps in 1080p ultra settings at stock speed overclocking boosted the performance by 40 frames on average, that is very impressive, continuing the test with the Battlefield 4 benchmark, it got 89fps at stock speed while overclocking enhanced the performance by 6.7% only, that too is pretty good, and lastly, Far Cry 3 only got the performance boost of 2.3%.It can be shown that the performance boost is evident but only at a margin.

Pricing

The most important reason why you opt for overclocking you current GPU instead of buying the new one is the price, even though the whole mining prospect has subsided, the GPU market is still facing severe shortages of supplies,and hence the prices are not stable yet.

Even if we neglect this aspect of the market the MSRPs of the graphics cards especially the high-end ones are sky-high, for example, the retail price of a GTX 1080Ti is almost $1000 while its MSRP is around $800, that too is too high to afford. We have seen a plethora of consumers going for a mid or low range graphics card and then overclocking them to attain the results they want; this is evident due to the whole mining scenario that has pushed potential buyers out of the market, making already difficult PC gaming even more demanding.

Verdict

So, you overclocked your old GPU – why you overclocked it; the potential reasons might have been the same as the ones mentioned above, now coming to the other question is the effort that you put in risking your Graphics card worth it? Again, starting with the performance bit, overclocking GPU increases your average frames by at least 6-8 frames per second that can change a moderate experience to a pleasingly over immersive experience, continuing towards the visuals part it can theoretically enhance your system’s graphics capabilities.

But it is only seen in the most optimized games such as GTA V or Fallout 4 other games that are not that optimized for the PC might end up suffering even decreasing your frames while having the same settings, and ending it with the pricing bit according to the broader test results the GTX 1050Ti OC got almost the same Frame rates while running GTA V in 1080p at high setting as the GTX 1060 3GB version, the only cost faced was that the warranty was damaged, and the graphics card ran at 90 degrees for the first time, the payoff was a lot less than than $100 price difference that both of them have.

Wrapping it up by this simple advice if you decide on going to overclock, try not to go for the ultimate guide, beginners guide will provide ample performance boost that you require and whatever method you opt for, extreme care and cautious monitoring of the hardware would end up benefiting you!

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